Rice, Kouchner, comment NATO Ministerial's decision

Work must continue...

World

10:41, 03 December 2008

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner briefed after the summit of the NATO foreign ministers, saying the decision of the Bucharest summit that Georgia and Ukraine would become the alliance members was still there, The Georgian Times reported.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner confirmed that MAP is still there. He told a separate press conference that a decision on MAP would be made eventually. He said Ukraine and Georgia are not ready for MAP at this stage.

Work must continue in the frameworks of the two commissions --the NATO-Ukraine Commission and the NATO-Georgia Commission. For various reasons, we thought we could not go any further,` he said.

US Secretary of State emphasized that NATO had not ignored the Russian aggression in Georgia, adding that Georgia`s integration into the alliance was just a matter of time.